Welcome to Bimmerfest -- The #1 Online Community for BMW related information! Please enjoy the discussion forums below and share your experiences with the 200,000 current, new and past BMW owners. The forums are broken out by car model and into other special interest sections such as BMW European Delivery and a special forum to voice your questions to the many BMW dealers on the site to assist our members!

This is not a car that I personally worked on. This car belongs to one of my customers that installed the vinyl wrap himself for his roof. I asked him for these pictures, because this is the flat black material, which is not to be confused with the matte black that you see in all of my other pictures. I've had this flat black material for a while now, but I never had requests for it, so I never got around to using it myself.

I don't have many pictures of it, but hopefully these will be enough to sort of give you guys an idea of how it looks like on a car.

Here is a black BMW E90 335i that I vinyl wrapped the roof with the 3M di-noc carbon fiber material. The owner of this car was from around the LA area and drove out to me in Orange County to have the vinyl work done. I had also vinyl wrapped his window trim in matte black a while back as well. It's not very noticeable in the pictures, but the mirror caps were real carbon fiber, as a reference point for how the vinyl compares to real carbon.

I always enjoy getting new cars that have just come out coming by to get vinyl work done. It's like the dealership's showroom is coming to me, instead of me going to it, haha. I had this gray/silver new Audi A7 come by to have me vinyl wrap the chrome/brushed aluminum window trim with a matte black finish, which gave it a very nice touch. Matte black was definitely a good choice over gloss black for this car and color combo imo. I wish I had taken some before pictures of this car, to show the before/after, since the chrome dominated such a large area on this car. However, I think I forgot my camera that day or it ran out of batteries. Luckily the owner of this car lived down the street from me in Irvine, so I dropped by to take these pictures and did some vinyl stuff for him at the same time.

Here is a more recent car that I did some vinyl work on. I got lucky to work on this really cool brand new factory matte paint CLS63. I did a lot of things to this car that day. Firstly, we decided to go with the matte black around the window trims and rear chrome trunk handle to black it out and tone down the high contrast between that and the paint/rest of the car. Then we went around the car and smoked/tinted out the tail lights, head lights, and lower bumper light pieces. For the rear tail lights, I only tinted the clear portion and left the red portion. This toned the clear portion down a bit but left the red nice and bright to give it a good contrast/pop in the rear, which also matched the other red accents on the car. For the front, I tinted the entire head light and also the lower bumper lights to bring their contrast down and make them in with the lower bumper mesh area.

I've been getting a lot of people asking me about matte black vs gloss black and which would be better for their cars. Matte black is usually better on a more aggressive looking car. Most Subarus are able to pull off the matte black look fairly well, even with a relatively more stock-ish car. Either way, here are some pictures of this white Subaru hatchback/wagon that I did the roof with in matte black and also tinted his tails red to unbling the chrome factory tail lights. The owner of this car was from around LA and drove down to me in Orange County.

I vinyl wrapped the roof of this red E46 3 series BMW with the 3M di-noc matte carbon fiber material. His roof spoiler and trunk were real carbon fiber. The roof spoiler was already starting to yellow a little bit, from the looks of it. You won't have this issue with the vinyl, which is a plus. The owner of this car came out to me in Orange County/Anaheim Hills from around the Los Angeles area to get the vinyl work done.

The owner of this car drove out from Los Angeles out to me in Orange County/Anaheim Hills to have his window trim wrapped on this dark blue Infiniti G35 sedan. Decided to go with the matte black finish over the gloss black, to give it somewhat of an accent still and so that it did not completely just blend into the rest of the car.

Before:

After:

Note in this picture, the vertical line/seam in the upper window trim piece is due to the factory piece having a seam/break there.

I know there are some of you out there who have no interest in the black vinyl roof wraps that I do or the way carbon fiber vinyl looks. However, you have to at least like protecting your car's headlights from rock chips and cracks.

The material that I use is not precut, so each and every installation is custom fitted to your car's specific application. This means no gaps or seam lines, in order to provide an invisible as possible installation result.

If there is enough interest, I may even be willing to do a group buy to start things out. Also, if your headlights are already faded and you wanted to restore it, I have a guy who can do that before the protective film is applied.

It was actually pretty hard figuring out a good way to show just how the clear film looks like on the headlights. However, hopefully this shows you just how clear and invisible the film is once applied to your headlights. I tried to make it as visible/noticeable as I could in this picture so you guys could actually see/notice the material.

Here is a brand new silver Mercedes E63 sedan that I vinyl wrapped both the roof and the chrome window trim + trunk handle on the rear. For the roof, we went with a gloss black vinyl wrap finish to give it a panoramic or gloss black painted look. In addition to the roof, the side roof rails were also wrapped in gloss black, which on this car extends from the bottom of the windshield to the back of the roof. On the window trim, we went with the matte black vinyl wrap finish over the gloss black in this case, to give it a nice contrast and have it blend in with the rubber that's also around the window trim pieces. It makes the window trim pop a bit more versus just completely blending in with the windows, if that makes sense.

The owner of this car contacted me to see if I could wrap the fading back pillars on his black Mercedes SLK. He decided to go with the 3M di-noc carbon fiber material for this, to give it a nice contrast and at the same time hide/cover up the peeling/fading black pieces. The owner of this car was actually just up the street from me in Anaheim Hills.

This is the same black Mercedes SLK as above that I vinyl wrapped the pillars in the 3M di-noc carbon fiber material. I also tinted / smoked the clear portions of the tail lights on his SLK. This is my current/new shade that I am using, which is lighter than before and really gives a fairly factory look similar to BMW's black line tail lights, for those who are familiar. The owner of this car was also in Orange County/Anaheim Hills.

Here is a black Mercedes W204 C300 or C350, I don't remember, since it was debaged. I vinyl wrapped the chrome or brushed aluminum window trims with my gloss black vinyl material to give it that shadowline blacked out look. For this car, we went with the gloss black material over the matte black material. We did this so that the window trim would blend in with the car more, since his tail lights were tinted fairly dark (making then look like gloss black) and his wheels had some gloss black accents on it as well. I also blacked out the chrome trunk handle in the rear to complete the entire chrome blacking our look/process.

In addition to the window trim, I also did the top half portion of the side mirror blinkers in gloss black. I basically covered the reflector portion and left the actual indicator portion visible/clear.

I've had a few people ask me what a gloss black vinyl wrapped roof would look like on a more stock/factory looking car. I vinyl wrapped the roof of this white BMW E46 325i sedan in my gloss black vinyl material. For this particular car, if the owner of this car was to have keep this car as is, without doing too many other mods, gloss black would definitely be the correct choice over matte black or carbon fiber, etc. Those finishes would be too aggressive for the car. Don't mind the pink emblems. This car was owned by a girl. The owner of this car drove out to me from Irvine/Orange County.

Here is an imola red BMW E46 M3 that had me vinyl wrap his roof with the 3M 1080 gloss carbon fiber material. I tried to take more pictures to try and help show the differences between carbon fiber weaves in the 3M 1080 vs the 3M di-noc material. I believe the owner of this car was from San Diego and came up to me in Orange County to have the vinyl work done. The weave in the 1080 material is a lot smaller/finer, and due to the nature of the material, it comes out wavier than the dinoc material.

Tinted / smoked the headlights on this new white C250 Mercedes sedan with the new lighter shade of tint that I have been using. The darkness of this tint is about half of other tint shade that I used to use. This shade of tint is light enough to still allow a good amount of light through it, so that not too much light output is reduced, but it is still dark enough that it still tones down the head lights / tail lights that it is being applied to. The owner of this car came out to me from around Corona to Orange County / Anaheim Hills to get the vinyl work done. I also blacked out the chrome and the roof on this same car.

Before - Untinted/unsmoked on passenger side, tinted/smoked on driver side:

Who said you couldn't modify wagons? Here is a brand new white Mercedes E63 AMG wagon that I vinyl wrapped the factory chrome or brushed aluminum window trim with my matte black vinyl material. In addition to the chrome window trim, I also blacked out the rear chrome trunk handle piece to complete the look. The owner of this car was local to me in Orange County. It made a big difference as you can see from the before/after pictures. Getting rid of the chrome made the car look a lot more solid and really pulled the car together. Completely changed the look/stance of the car in my opinion.

Brand new alpine white BMW 550i F10 sedan, less than a week old. The owner of this car had me vinyl wrap the roof of his F10 in gloss black including the side roof rails on his car. The antenna was painted gloss jet black to match the roof. This car came out to me to from Buena Park area to Anaheim Hills/Orange County to get the work done. I think the gloss black roof really suited this bigger body car very well, especially with the black trunk spoiler and darker gunmetal wheels. The car came with the sport package factory shadowline trim from the factory already, so that match fairly well with the roof as well. You can find some more pictures of this car on the Vorsteiner site/facebook.

Somewhat more recently, I had this titanium silver BMW E46 330i ZHP sedan come by to have me vinyl wrap the roof of his car with the 3M di-noc matte carbon fiber vinyl material for him. I think this is the first E46 or even BMW in general that I have worked on that did not have a sunroof, which was pretty cool. As you can see in the pictures, both the side roof rails were wrapped along with the roof for this car. The owner of this car was from around the Los Angeles county and came out to me in Orange County / Anaheim Hills to get it done.

Again, this is the new lighter shade of tint/smoke film that I am using. This is not regular normal window tint. This material is designed to be used on the exteriors of cars. I tinted / smoked the tail lights on this darker gray gunmetal colored new E350 sedan. We decided to go with covering the entire tail light to give it a consistent finish over the whole tail light versus just tinting the clear or red section on this car. The owner of this car was from around Newport Beach area and came out to me in Anaheim Hills to get the work done. It's not often that I get non white cars, so this will help out those who have similar colored cars and were thinking about getting their tails smoked or tinted and how it'd look. I also took some pictures inside and outside, to show the differences of how the shade looks in different lighting conditions.

The owner of this silver F10 528i sedan drove down from norcal / San Francisco to me in Orange County to have his window trim vinyl wrapped with my gloss black vinyl. Similar to what the shadowline trim would have looked like from the BMW factory. I took more close up pictures around the edges, corners, etc this time to show you guys in more detail of how the finished product looks.

Not exactly sure the name of the color of this 370z, but the color looked silver. Either way, I vinyl wrapped the roof of this car in my gloss black material. The owner drove from Los Angeles county to me in Orange County to the roof wrapped. The curves of the roof really help make the gloss black roof pop and stand out a bit more. The owner of this car plastidip his antenna in the matte black finish. So this is good for those who wanted to get gloss black roofs and wanted to plastidip their antennas. I believe plastidip has a gloss black version out now that'd probably work better.

Some of the plastidip peeled off/up a bit when installing the vinyl. Tip of advice, plastidip the antenna after the roof is wrapped, instead of plastidipping i tbeforehand.

I had a new silver Lexus CT200h come by to have me vinyl wrap his roof with the 3M di-noc matte carbon fiber material. The owner of this car was also from Irvine / Orange County. Took some close up pictures around the antenna area and side rails, just to show you the extent of the vinyl coverage and it looks up close. I think the roof accented the silver color of the car fairly well, especially since this carbon fiber finish has somewhat of a silver/gray tone to it, even though it is the black carbon fiber finish. The owner of this car also wants me to wrap his hood with the 3M dinoc carbon fiber material and tint his tails as well, so once I do those, I'll post some more pictures.

The owner of this blue VW Mk4 Jetta contacted me regarding the clear coat/paint issues that he has been having on his roof. The original plan was to wrap the trunk, roof, and hood, to cover up and prevent any further oxidizing of the paint. However, I told him to just go with the roof first, to test it out and see how that turns out first before continuing with the rest.

Vinyl is only an alternative to paint, it is not a replacement. However, in this case, it was a cheaper option and better than leaving the roof to oxidize further. The better condition the roof is in, the better the final results of the vinyl wrap will be. The vinyl material is very thin, about the same thickness as the car's paint, so it is by no means a body filler. Luckily for the owner of this car, even though the roof was in pretty bad condition, the vinyl was able to hide/cover up most of the oxidation without showing through the vinyl itself.

We went with the gloss black vinyl finish for the roof to give it a more factory look, versus going with the matte black finish or carbon fiber finishes.